"I ran out of talent," admitted Martin as he talked about his pole-winning qualifying effort at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Friday night for Sunday's Kobalt Tools 500; his first pole in 281 events dating back to Richmond in 2001.
"I feel like a rookie, I really, really do. Not only did the lap scare me and I felt like I ran out of talent up off of turn four, there was no possible way I could hold my foot on the floor and not hit the wall with the back end first up off of turn four. It was really fun, I live to scare myself like that, that is part of it. But, I continued to be nervous all the way through the rest of qualifying much like I used back in the early '90s when we lucky enough to get poles back then. Has been a long time. I do want to commend the No. 8 car bunch for putting me the outside pole six times last year, which was pretty incredible. But I wouldn't come out of the trailer until (Travis) Kvapil (final qualifier) ran. I would not budge because that would just be my luck. So, I feel like a rookie right now. It was a pretty strenuous qualifying session, I'm looking forward to working on race setup tomorrow."
Martin's lap of 29.640 seconds, 187.045 mph, was a full tenth of a second faster than second place qualifier Kurt Busch and seven tenths faster than last place qualifier Mike Bliss.
For Busch, Martin's lap was strong enough to convince him he couldn't match it. It was, according to Busch he difference between "shaking and tentative."
“It is," said Busch when asked about shaking and being tentative. "It’s amazing. When you hit a lap as good as Mark did tonight, I think everybody saw that lap get posted and say ‘man, I can’t touch that, I’m not even going to come close.’ Everybody is holding their breath the 30 seconds they are out there. The fact is, if you hit it just right, you’ll know if you’re tight or loose, you’ll know if you’re sliding. You hope that the lap ends and it’s over with. Whoever could slide their car the fastest was going to end up the quickest. For us, I couldn’t get in the corner right because I was shaking, I felt like I was too tentative to throw it in the corner and step on the gas hard. I’m still surprised that we’re second. We ran a different groove and maybe that came into play. We ran a groove up, the second lane of asphalt. It was a little slower through the corners, but a little better down the straightaways. There’s where our Penske Dodge has been running better this year. I think that is going to be a trend the rest of the weekend, running up a little higher.”
“I wasn’t on the pole, so maybe I should be shaking more," McMurray said. "I don’t know, I think it’s been more adventurous for me here when I’ve qualified 30th and you’re trying to hang onto that car. My car, it wasn’t that thrilling of a lap. I think my save last week at Vegas was way more exciting for me than my qualifying lap here.”
Following the mandatory victory lane functions Martin, still in constant motion as he sat before the media, talked about his lap, which was possible because of a combination of good preparation and driver discipline.
"Most of the day, I didn't know what to tell the team to do," Martin explained. "The car was tight in practice and we loosened it up and that didn't help. We went the other way and that didn't help. From there, I told them to leave the car alone and I practiced driving.
"I'm an old man and I don't need to practice how to drive but today I needed to practice discipline."
It might be that a few of Martin's fellow competitors should take a cue from the old salt and instead of searching frantically on how to adjust the car to go faster, practice a little discipline in their driving and see if that doesn't transfer into faster speeds.
By Stan Creekmore
No comments:
Post a Comment